03-26-2011, 12:49 PM
Hoot Wrote:Here's a weird twist. I've only reloaded my first set of brass once, but after their initial firing, the cases did not grow one bit. I expected to need to trim them, but I didn't. Some actually shrunk a mil or two. Figure that one out... That was Hornady brass and Hornady New Dimension die which I'm not totally thrilled about the quality of. I've honed and polished it a little closer to my chamber now. Out of the box, it resized my .299 fired necks back to .285. The virgin brass came out of the box at .289, so I honed the die to resize the .299 to .289. Still a lot of brass working,but better than .285.
Hoot
Hoot:
I haven't had a need to trim Lapua Grendel brass. Not when new and not after firing it ten or fifteen times.
A year or so ago I guess Lapua issued a lot of Grendel brass that was about .001 under minimum length. Or at least that is what some loaders thought but who knows how good or bad their calipers were or how they measured the brass. Some guys were worried about safety and others accuracy.
The bottom line is that as long as the headspace is OK and the necks aren't so long as to cause mechanical problems when chambering, the neck length really means nothing unless it is way excessive or insufficient. And I mean so long that the neck pinches the bullet when it chambers or so short it won't hold or support the bullet during cycling.
The design and purpose of the Grendel cartridge and chamber is service use. Ask Alexander. I take it to the bank. Differences in chambers between .295 and .300 may mean something in terms of brass life (but so far it hasn't) but really mean nothing in terms of performance. Barrel quality does but not what chamber diameter is being used.
Given what I can recall from the previous Grendel forums, there were discussions galore about neck length. Not surprisingly, we found that trimming Lapua brass for length was a 'feel good' measure -- otherwise unnecessary either out of the bag or for a good ten or fifteen firiings. Same with turning necks. I won't say the same for guys who blow out 7.62 X 39 brass but that IMI stuff we used wasn't as high a quality as the Lapua or Hornady Grendel brass and blowing out brass overworks it to begin with.
So, guys who go through gyrations over the Lapua brass are more than likely damaging very expensive Lapua brass more so than they are getting any sort of performance improvement.
Just some comments from discussions from the last Grendel forum.
LR1955